


A Moment In Time

by elvengypsypheonix



Series: Yuánfèn [4]
Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:48:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26611702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elvengypsypheonix/pseuds/elvengypsypheonix
Summary: A moment in time in the series that didn't quite fit into the narrative in the end.Aka, a deleted scene from Koi No Yokan
Relationships: François II de France/Mary I of Scotland | Mary Queen of Scots
Series: Yuánfèn [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1187135
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	A Moment In Time

**Author's Note:**

> So, I know it's been a long, long time. Life got crazy, and that was before the craziness of life as we know it today came to be. The other night, I just felt the need to go back and visit these old friends, and started rereading, and am hopefully (crossing fingers) going to see what's next in their story again.
> 
> It may be a long time coming, as I'm doing home school with my niece which is a full-time job, but in the meantime, I stumbled on this lost deleted scene and thought I'd share it with anyone who might be intrigued to see a lost moment in Rosemary's story.

**:-:-:-:-:-:  
  
****Saturday, July 4th, 2015  
****Vallejo, California  
****4:48 p.m.  
  
****:-:-:-:-:-:  
  
**“I don't get it, I thought things were going well with you two,” Kendall frowned as she cleaned the bakery displays.  
  
“I told you, there are reasons I don't date,” Rosemary sighed as she cleaned the espresso machine. “Can we drop it, please?”  
  
“Alright,” Kendall agreed softly. “Where are you going on your vacation?”  
  
“Camping up north,” she answered easily, telling the same half-truth she had been telling for weeks.  
  
“That will be fun,” Kendall grinned.  
  
“It will be nice to get away,” she agreed honestly.  
  
“I hope you have a good time.”  
  
“Thanks,” Rosemary looked over at her coworker and smiled, before focusing back on her task, eager to be done with her last day.  
  
The others knew she was going on vacation, she had asked the owner to keep it quiet that she was using her vacation time as her two-week notice. She had enough money saved up to get through the last month of summer and was using these two weeks to go check out some of the other campuses in the UC system to see if any of them were options to continue work on her Bachelors since she didn't want to go to SF state and risk running into Andrew.  
  
She knew in some ways it was stupid, to be changing her life plans all because she had been stupid enough to fall in love with someone, who couldn't handle what she had later come to believe about them. And yet, she knew that she couldn't handle seeing him, being around him, and not being with him. It would drive her to the looney bin, she was sure of that. So, if that meant changing her life plans, then she would change her life plans.   
  
It wouldn't be the first time she had tried to change her life because of him, only then it had been to save his life.  
  
That was the strange thing, in the weeks since she had told him everything in Sasha’s living room since Andrew had walked away not willing to accept her belief in the supernatural; she had finally remembered everything. Everything from her previous life, the good and the bad.  
  
She remembered the time in Scotland when she was very young, with all eight of her friends, how Mary Fleming’s mother had been her governess and traveled with all of them to France and pushed the Marys ahead of the others, and so when Henry had gotten her pregnant Catherine had sent the four Marys back to Scotland with her while letting Kenna, Greer, Lola, and Aylee stay in France to train when she had been sent to the convent to be hidden. She remembered everything of her time with Francis as children, her years at the convent, the short two years back at French Court before she lost Francis…  
  
Sasha had held her long into the night as she cried remembering that day in the clearing…  
  
She remembered the discussion with Catherine, the decision the hide how Francis truly died from history, letting the recent illness be remembered to avoid rumors of Delphine’s involvement and Charles’ involvement in recruiting Delphine becoming taint on Charles’ ascent to the throne.  
  
She truly hated how right Catherine had been, how history was remembered in how it was written, not how people lived, and loved, and died. History had even forgotten how people looked, instead remembering them as they were painted or people had written about them. Francis’ beautiful blonde curls and blue eyes were forgotten. Someone had chosen to focus on the red highlights that the sun brought out in Mary’s hair, and she was remembered as a Scottish auburn beauty, not the dark locks that Francis had loved to run his fingers through. And people always talked about her height, never realizing the shoes she wore to give her the extra inches so she’d not be so small compared to her fellow Scots when she had returned to Scotland, and now they believed she had been 5’11”. Francis wasn’t even that tall, which is why she was remembered as being taller than her husband, even though she had never worn shoes that tall in France.  
  
Her poems for him were remembered though, her period of mourning, her grief, even if she thought it was hilarious they questioned if the two of them had ever consummated their relationship. They had consummated the relationship before they’d been wed, Of course, Francis had been wise enough to make sure to get a vial of blood so they could bless the sheets after everyone had left the chambers, so no one would be the wiser that she hadn’t been a virgin when he’d taken her the night of their wedding. Of course, the only way they could have truly avoided such speculation in the history books was if she hadn’t lost child, but God hadn’t been that kind to them. And History hadn’t remembered Jean Philippe.  
  
Catherine had made sure Francis’ son remained anonymous, living out his life quietly so he couldn’t be considered a threat to the throne. She remembered hearing news of him though, before her own death, of his second child being born. She was still trying to use ancestry to see if she could trace down Jean Philippe's line, see if it had survived, see if some part of her Francis had lived on, just as she tried to use ancestry to trace down Greer and Kenna. It was foolish, but she couldn’t help it.  
  
She could easily trace what became of her James, who couldn’t considering she left her son to do what Henry had wanted her to, claim England’s throne, even if it wasn’t to join with France. She wished James had been able to honor her request that Elizabeth had denied her, have buried her in France instead of placing her across the hall from blasted Elizabeth, though perhaps it was best, she wasn’t sure if the French would have been nice enough to have put her body with the rest of the French nobility during their pillaging. Francis and the other’s may have not been left in their proper tombs during the Revolution, but at least they had been put together, later to get returned to the chapel as best as possible, at least he was with his ancestors and successors still.  
  
She wasn’t sure they would have been so nice to the bones of a Scottish Queen who had only been France’s Queen little more than a year, a tumultuous year at that, so while not a preferred option, at least she knew her former body was still buried on sacred ground.  
  
Which was entirely too morbid to be thinking about, and a thought she had far too often. Focusing back on her work, she gave the space in front of her one final wipe and moved on to other tasks.  
  
She had remembered being reunited with the Mary's in Scotland, though she was never very close to them like she had been her other friends. She helped Narcisse get free of Elizabeth after Lola's death, be reunited with Jean, and escape back to France and Catherine's protection. The Mary's left her with time, save the one who stayed almost till the end before she sent her away and she joined a convent. She remembered her other husbands, remembered her sweet boy and losing him, remembered Elizabeth's scorn, and the years in exile.  
  
She remembered Elizabeth's betrayal, remembered all Catherine’s words from France coming back to her as she was told about her charges, and she realized how much she had been stupid to not pay better attention to Catherine's warnings. She remembered those last few months of waiting, worse those last days, and those last hours of acceptance.  
  
She finally understood all the times she had woken up as a child not remembering her dreams, but with a migraine from hell.  
  
She finished the last of her work, said goodbye to Kendall and Jack before clocking out and making her way home, quietly walking past everyone out celebrating the Fourth. Sasha was out tending the gardens when she arrived at the house, and she made her way over to where the other woman tended the roses.  
  
“How’d your last day go?” Sasha asked, reaching up to push the raven wisps that had escaped her ponytail back from her eyes.  
  
“Long,” Rosemary admitted. “Otherwise it was okay. Kendall kept trying to get me to explain what went wrong with Andrew again…” she added quietly, tracing the petals of a rose.  
  
“Are you sure that this is the course of action you want to take?” Sasha pressed gently, “Absolutely positive?”  
  
“It feels like my only option Sasha,” she argued sadly, “Andrew isn’t able to accept what I believe, I can’t handle seeing him, knowing everything I know, feeling everything I feel. Maybe I can do it someday, but now… it will drive me crazy. And I can’t just hide away from life, I need to continue my degree. I need to live my life, it’s what I always have to do, no matter the heartache I’m dealing with. Life must be lived.”  
  
“At least this time around you aren’t responsible for an entire country,” Sasha pointed out with a smile.  
  
Rosemary couldn’t help laughing, “Thank God. It’s still so weird, you know?” she began, turning to pull herself up on the retaining wall and sit rather than stand any longer. “Remembering everything, I can remember just how utterly terrifying it was on an almost hourly basis, knowing all those people were depending on me. I can’t help but think of the monarchs now, and kinda envy them. They aren’t the only ones responsible now, I mean okay, they still get the media and the invasion of privacy, and that I have complete sympathy for, but it’s not them making all the final decisions. Of course, we didn’t have some of the problems then they have nowadays…”  
  
“No, but religious wars haven’t gone away, though they don’t have plagues to deal with or famine caused by plagues,” Sasha countered.  
  
“Or people deciding to kill you because you’re a threat to their throne. Now you just have to sign over your claim to the throne and get exiled, nice and simple,” she agreed with a nod. “I wish I had ignored my stupid Uncle, sent Elizabeth that letter back when Henry was alive. Hell, I wish I hadn’t destroyed that treaty in my grief over losing Francis. James would have probably still inherited, but Elizabeth would have probably helped me instead of locking me up and then killing me…”  
  
“We can’t change the past, especially a past more than four hundred years old,” Sasha pointed out with a wave of the hand that held the nippers before she went back to trimming the roses.   
  
“I know,” she sighed, laying back on the ground to look up at the sun filtering through leaves of the various roses.  
  
“When do you leave on Monday?” Sasha asked after several minutes of companionable silence.  
  
“We had a small change of plans, the girls are both itching to escape their family so we’re leaving the middle of the night tomorrow instead. I’ll make sure Smokey has enough food and water before we go though so he should be fine through the morning.”  
  
“That’s fine, I’ll take care of Smoke, don’t worry.”  
  
“Thanks again, Sasha,” Rosemary looked over at her with a smile.  
  
“You’re welcome,” Sasha answered with a smile, “And you remember something Rosemary, I’ve got no intention of renting that space out again anytime soon. It’s yours, whenever. You aren’t just my tenant, you never were. You need a place, I don’t care if you can pay me right away while you get your feet under you. Got it?”  
  
She smiled slowly, and nodded, “I got it. I’m gonna head in, finish getting ready for the epic road trip of insanity. I still can’t believe Steph and Kyla are going on this thing with me…”  
  
“Hey, what are friends for? If I had the time and wasn’t knee-deep in my own work, I’d be going with you,” Sasha spoke as Rosemary jumped down from the retaining wall.  
  
She paused, turned to face her friend, “We both know that is a complete load of crap. You couldn’t stand Steph in high school, could barely stand Kyla. That hasn’t changed once in the last four years since you graduated and escaped them.”  
  
“Shh,” Sasha hissed, “They don’t know that, and Steph is one of my best customers, do you realize how many people at her college she’s sent to my etsy account? I may think she’s a complete ditz, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate your friendship and her apparent usefulness in my business. After all, if it wasn’t for that etsy account and what I make at the markets, I couldn’t pay the taxes on this lovely house my grandmother left me free and clear that you and I get to call home.”  
  
“And I didn’t argue that, did I?” she countered with a smile, “Just pointed out the bull in your talk about wanting to come with. You’d kill Steph before we reached Oakland.”  
  
“I would not kill her in the first hour of driving… I can’t promise she’d survive the first day, however. We work in small doses, like two hours top.”  
  
“Exactly,” Rosemary laughed, “Have fun with the roses,” she called as she headed towards the basement apartment and the list of chores she had to finish so she could leave for two weeks


End file.
